or domestic, consists in the resolved maintenance of a given relation between supply and demand, other than the instinctive, or (directly) natural, one.
12. Similarly, vulgar political economy asserts for a "law" that wages are determined by competition.
Now I pay my servants exactly what wages I think necessary to make them comfortable. The sum is not determined at all by competition; but sometimes by my notions of their comfort and deserving, and sometimes by theirs. If I were to become penniless tomorrow, several of them would certainly still serve me for nothing.
In both the real and supposed cases the so-called "law" of vulgar political economy is absolutely set at defiance. But I cannot set the law of gravitation at defiance, nor determine that in my house I will not allow ice to melt, when the temperature is above thirty-two degrees. A true law outside of my house, will remain a true one inside of it. It is not, therefore, a law of Nature that wages are determined by competition. Still less is it a law of State, or we should not now
